weekend pickthrough- lazy beyond comprehension edition.

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so today the boyfriend and i celebrated the opening weekend of the dunstan school buffet with a hearty breakfast of nachos and home made donuts (and a promise to our intestines never to do it again). i brought my sunday paper along to pass the time in between plates, and came across something quite curious midway through my CVS flier- a product so ludicrous, i was stopped in my tracks.

EASY FEET!?

with the catchy tag line: “no more bending to clean your feet!”, easy feet easily qualifies as the laziest product that i have ever seen.

every year, americans invent more and more useless contraptions that allow us to do less and less. at first it seemed harmless. so what if we wanted to “set it and forget it” every now and again… it was cool. at least we were still bending down to clean our own feet. right?

are we really so fat/lazy/immobile that we can’t even bend at the waist anymore?

it reminds me all too much of the chair/toilet/feeding stations from the idiocracy world (which is a MUST SEE if you haven’t seen it). and i worry that instead of retraining ourselves to exercise and eat normal sized portions (we weren’t always one of the fattest nations in the world), we’re just going to keep inventing devices that make it possible for us to stay obese.

i don’t know. i’m speechless. am i overreacting? is easy feet a clever invention or the eventual downfall of our civilization?

7 responses

one thing to remember is that there are a lot of people who are disabled, through illness, genetic defect, age, etc, and cannot easily reach their feet, so this would be a wonderful product for them. there’s a spider web of problems caused by disability, and people who are unable to move easily tend to become fatter, and then get mocked or stereotyped as being lazy and dirty, when in fact, they simply cannot exercise or easily reach certain areas to clean themselves. and if they don’t have the resources for a home health care worker, they get stuck in a downward spiral that our society does very little to help them out of. so an inexpensive product that could help ease their life a little seems like a great idea to me.

you make an excellent point! and now i feel like a jerk (sorry elderly and disabled folks out there with limited mobility- i’m kind of an ass!). although i do feel like there are a percentage of people out there who would rather work around obesity & inactivity than overcome it. and i think that is why this product upsets me so much. yes, there are some people who really can’t bend down to their feet to clean them… but there are also some folks out there who can’t be bothered to do it, and that to me is a symptom of a greater problem. so yes, i concede that easy feet is a product that should exist, and could be extremely helpful to many… but i qualify that concession with a stern suggestion for people who can get off their asses and get moving, to please do so. i wonder how many calories the average american would burn if there were no remote controls? (or would we just get better at not channel surfing?).

i won’t lie and say that my feet couldn’t use a little extra attention… and that i don’t sort of hate bending down in the shower. i just worry that it starts with bending down in the shower, and just keeps advancing until we’re big jelly blobs who can’t even muster the strength to feed ourselves or wipe our own butts.